Linear
by cupcaked
Summary: Life for an ordinary person moves in a straight line: birth to death, Start to Stop. Uchiha Sasuke is not ordinary.


**A/N:** Thanks, Megyal.

Linear

Uchiha Sasuke's life halted when he was eight.

Stopped. Ceased. Paused.

It's strange, really.

Strange and very, very sad.

--

_Play_

--

He follows behind Itachi, like a little puppy dog, to his favourite training spot. He then watches Itachi wield his weapons with such finesse and ease and perfection.

He then tries to do the same, but ends up with a hurt ankle instead. No matter, because Nii-chan loves him and carries him back home. He can feel the muscles of his brother's back shift under him with every step forward, and Sasuke knows, deep down, that he'll be happy if he is even half as good as Nii-chan.

_Arigato_, he tells Nii-chan later, and he can see his brother bite back a smile.

"Just be more careful next time, Sasuke."

Weeks and weeks later, Oka-san packs him two onigiris for lunch. He listens attentively in class, has one onigiri for lunch, stays back to train, trains, watches the sun set, trains, has the other onigiri for dinner, and rushes back home.

Everyone is dead, even Nii-chan, because it's not the brother he knows that stands over their parents with haunted eyes and a bloody sword, not the same boy who had carried him home that shows him the painful memories that makes him cry and scream and wish to die.

--

_Pause_

--

Darkness, and he thinks he gets his wish before waking up in starchy white sheets, to white walls and white lights.

_He's awake_, he hears someone whisper, and three pairs of sad, sad eyes stare back at him.

"Nii-chan?" he rasps, gripping the sheets with his small fingers, his heart (or what remains) stuck in his throat.

Nothing but sad, sad eyes.

_He's alive!_ a new voice says faraway, belonging to a male, and Sasuke cries. He sobs, like a broken, lost little boy and not like an Uchiha he is expected to be, one who is special and headstrong and controlled.

Uchiha Sasuke is present and breathing, but he is not alive.

--

_Pause_

--

His wounds heal. His home is cleaned and scrubbed. He grows taller.

He goes back to school. He gets stronger, better. He graduates, top of the class.

He gets put into a team. Naruto – that idiot. Sakura – how annoying. Kakashi – strange. Team Seven.

Sasuke goes through the motions of life: eating, sleeping, interacting (when forced), training, learning.

Naruto has a loud mouth but gives grudging praises and envious looks while Sakura makes him perfect tomato onigiris and Kakashi teaches him the first step in controlling lightning itself.

He thinks he would be able to feel the bond between him and Team Seven if only he is…well, _living_. But he is not, because his life is on pause.

All this, these motions of going through life, they are just fillers. His life would resume once Itachi is dead; he knows it will.

It has to.

--

_Rewind_

--

"Fugaku-sama."

A clan member – Sasuke doesn't know his name – stops in front of his father with a grim look on his face.

"The meeting—"

He can't see his father's face, but the man, who is tall with short dark hair, stops talking abruptly. He then looks down and notices him, standing there by his father's side.

"Oh, Sasuke! I didn't see you there."

Sasuke just smiles and nods his head in greeting.

"Your son smiles so much. He's a happy kid, huh?"

Sasuke beams brighter, while his father nods curtly. They walk back home slowly, Sasuke with a slowly-dimming smile, his father with subdued eyes.

--

_Play_

--

He's literally one breath away from dying, but he's done it.

Itachi is dead. It's his brother's dead body, not anyone else's, that lies beside his feet.

He's dead, dead, _dead_.

He wants to scream because it's done, his life's purpose fulfilled, his only dream accomplished, but there's really no more energy left except for breathing, so he falls, next to his fallen brother and inhales in and out.

Sasuke the closest he's been in sixteen years to death, but he finally feels _alive_. Yes, he's alive and breathing and his brother is dead and still.

Yes.

His life quietly starts again, from its last _play_ point.

One moment he's eight and running back home on the dark streets, the next he's sixteen, lying next to his dead brother.

Life is good.

--

_Play_

--

He opens his eyes, and he's in a dim room. It smells like iron and candle wax. Brown walls and brown floors and dusty bed linen. Even the bandages across his chest are brown: the colour of rust.

Whatever. It's better he's hurt anyway because if he wasn't, he would be celebrating and making a fool of himself.

Everything is brown but suddenly there's a bright orange mask and a strange voice promising him supposed truths and his eye starts to bleed and the man in the strange orange mask is on black fire.

Hmm.

The man retreats into the darkness, making pained noises, and his eye starts to hurt (badly) so he clamps his hands over it. He's all sweaty and clammy, and the noises in the dark stop and the man comes back out in that stupid orange mask.

That is when the truths start to pour out, flooding his mind and heart and bones.

"Itachi was trying to protect you."

--

_Pause_

--

Time stops.

His life stops.

Literally.

"Is that supposed to be funny?" he asks angrily, but his voice is too shaky to sound furious.

"You need to know the truth about Uchiha Itachi's life."

_Shut up_, he wants to say, but he's too tired and he really wants to know the truth.

"Remember your kind, older brother."

--

_Rewind_

--

It's a bright, bright day and even though he's not training in the sun like his brother, he is sweating.

Sasuke is six-years-old.

Finally, Itachi walks in from the sun and into the shade. He's all sweaty but Sasuke knows he's not even tired.

Not one bit.

He hands his brother a container of water, which Itachi takes with a nod of thanks. Three long pulls of water, and then his brother sets the container down and sits next to him.

"I brought strawberries."

Sasuke nods. "They're good as an after-training snack. I heard Oka-san talking to you about it. When I enroll in the Academy, I'm going to eat three boxes every day!"

His brother shakes his head lightly. "Silly boy. I brought them for you."

"But I'm not even training!"

"You're even sweatier than me, Sasuke. Eat up."

Sasuke grins, and in the shade, Itachi peels off the tiny green leaves and Sasuke eats them, leaving sticky trails of strawberry juice running down his arms.

--

_Pause_

--

"For him, your life weighed more than the village."

The room is silent, and he stares at the man, Uchiha Madara or Tobi or whoever he really is, until the bright orange mask blurs and all he can see is black.

--

_Stop_

--

_Your life weighed _more_ than the village._

Sasuke's life ceased when he was eight.

Call it what you want: stopped, halted, paused. It just means there was a void in time (five years, or one thousand eight hundred and twenty five days) where Sasuke was living but was not really alive.

He has no clear memories of that annoying blonde boy in his team. No memories of her clear green eyes with their bright confessions of love. Nothing but the loud cries of a thousand birds to remember a grey-haired teacher.

He can't remember anything if he's not really alive, and he was not, at least not _really_ during those days.

Memories are what he has of Itachi and their parents, of their impromptu games of hide-and-seek and quiet conversations and he can remember those because he was alive and happy and well.

Sasuke's life breaks at sixteen, under the strain of truth.

--

_Stop_

--

When he is with Team Taka, he tries to remember.

--

_Rewind_

--

"Sasuke!"

Oka-san hands him a brown lunch bag and he says _Arigato!_ and he passes Nii-chan who whispers _Good luck_ and_—_

And nothing.

--

_Rewi–_

--

He is seven, and he's waiting in his brother's room in the dark. The moon glows eerily, its silver light spilling through the curtains. He doesn't want to be scared, so he closes his eyes and wishes that Nii-chan comes home soon, please.

"Sasuke," a voice says, waking him up and he opens his eyes and—

--

_Re– _

--

The moon is bright and frightening yet calming behind Itachi and his brother is glowing.

He tries to chase after him but Itachi is too fast, and before he leaves Konoha forever, he turns back and Sasuke can see the te—

--

_Stop_

--

He's lying on a thin mattress in his own room, separated from the rest of Team Taka, and he's sweating and shivering because he cannot remember.

Fuck.

He cannot replay the images of the brother who loved him so in his mind's eye. He cannot see his mother's bright, open smile now. He can remember Before, but he cannot see it.

He needs to do something, anything, so he pushes away the blanket and walks to the adjoining room. Suigetsu is sleeping with his mouth open, and he spots Karin's glasses and one of Jugo's books on the only table in this abandoned house.

He walks to it, slowly, calmly, and takes them. He walks outside, and in the moonlight, he breaks her glasses and rips out pages from his book.

None of that makes him feel any better; the anger and despair and helplessness still fester.

There is no going back now. No rewinding, no hoping his life will resume. There are no memories now.

There will be no more memories.

Under the moonlight, he is shaking but cannot cry, because he has run out of tape.

He is not alive.

--

_Now_

--

He knows their names, though. That he remembers.

Sakura is screaming his name. "Sasuke-kun! You can't do this!"

It's role reversal, because Naruto is silent. How surprising.

Black flames lick at the edges of Konoha, and they're bathed in an ethereal light that is dark and bright at the same time, illuminating everything and nothing. Amaterasu is beautiful, he thinks.

It's just the three of them.

"You – we're standing here, and it's like last time, Sasuke-kun! Team Seven, remember? We went on missions, for days at a time. You remember, don't you? This is not what you're like, Sasuke-kun. You _have_ to remember. Like that time Kakashi-sensei tied Naruto to a tree and you—"

"Stop."

Sakura falters, and while she has tears in her eyes, she is determined. Older Sakura is refreshing. She whispers, "You have to remember, Sasuke."

Refreshing, but still annoying.

His lips twist into a smirk. "I can't."

Naruto speaks, for the first time since he invaded Konoha. "I know what happened with the village and your clan, Sasuke, but this…revenge, it isn't going to make things better!"

Sasuke continues as though Naruto did not speak. "I cannot remember, but I can show you."

With that, Tsukuyomi activates and images flicker pass their eyes: Itachi smiling at Sasuke, Itachi and Sasuke by the pier, dipping their toes in the water, Itachi slaying the family, Sasuke screaming, Village Elders nodding sagely, the Third Hokage closing his eyes, Itachi crying.

Naruto and Sakura are screaming, and Sasuke wants to cry because this is the only way he can access the memories of his brother now that he is broken. He cannot cry, so he does so in the only way he can:

Blood runs down his cheek from his eye, like a trail of tears.

**END**


End file.
